The Future for St Barbe: Innovative; Inclusive; Resilient

After beginning life as a ‘museum in a room’ with no pre-existing collection, St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery quickly built a reputation that belied its size and location.

For 15 years, St Barbe gathered a collection of more than 18,000 local history objects, and a gained a reputation as one of the finest art galleries on the South coast.

In 2015 it became apparent it was time to move on again – and we embarked on an ambitious £2 million project to transform St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery.
The vision was simple - to build on past successes, to create a landmark cultural venue for Lymington, and to ensure the community was placed at the heart of everything we did.
Thanks to a significant financial commitment from the Heritage Lottery Fund we began the journey.
Just over two years later, we have just realised our vision - and opened the doors to the 'new look' St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery on 29 July 2017.
The £1.78 million grant from the HLF was dependant on the Museum raising an additional £525,000 from its own networks. We have now achieved that, thanks to a huge response from the community.

We now have:

Bigger and better galleries which will host an exclusive programme of exhibitions including works of art from the finest collections in the world;

New museum displays using the large collections (18,000 items and counting) to tell fascinating local stories about people and places;

A purpose designed archive and store to enable local people to research their own history as well as that of the local area;

Larger well equipped education and activity spaces for schools and local groups;

A much improved entrance and spacious open plan front of house area with a Museum shop, visitor information and café.

St Barbe will also remaining open for longer in the summer season - until 5pm on weekdays, and for the first time ever it will also open on a Sunday (11am – 4pm) .

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This is the sort of feedback we love! It is from a guest who attended the Private View of Art of World War ll. He wrote: "Thank you for the tickets to the opening of the John Noott exhibition. I thought the artwork was incredible, and I particularly liked the way you were able to tie in museum exhibits throughout the exhibition, it really linked the museum and the gallery together beautifully. And my children absolutely loved it, they had a whale of a time in the museum, I have genuinely never seen my kids react in that way to a museum before."

Our new cover image is from the exhibition which opens to the public tomorrow. The Art of World War ll, John Noott Collection, is a chance to enjoy rarely seen portrayals of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, life on the Home Front and items from St Barbe's own collection that show the impact of the Second World War locally. The painting is Colombia Road, Bethnal Green, by Hilda Davis (oil on canvas 1942 )